Page 31 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

Chapter Twenty-One

Fullness of reckoning

At last.

Fullness of connection

Never.

“ W ait! I want to come with you!” squelched a princess from the second floor.

I peered up from the courtyard where I had gathered with the other champions in the deepening shadows of the evening before leaving for the night’s work.

My heart pumped harder, but only King See—in his gothic palace—might be aware of my eagerness for Princess Bring to return to her fullness.

She slapped to the cobblestones from above, and promptly drew herself back into a stack of blobs. “Queen Perantiqua, I want to come with you.”

“And are you an adult again?” I asked. Flinging herself off the second level seemed to contradict her readiness… though I did like to do the same from the rooftop.

“I am an adult.” She glowered.

“You seem determined to be sure.”

She stretched taller. “I have felt a pressing need to return to all duties. Since five minutes ago.”

How timely. “Tell me, Princess Bring, how does your power fare?”

“My power fares fully, Your Majesty.” She beamed a smile that shined like a beacon.

There she was again, our kind monster and friend—and princess to a king. Did she recall him? We could only hope not. Here was a chance that not many beings got—a chance to present themselves to someone they loved for the first time after a great mistake.

A reset.

I nodded. “I would never seek to inform a monster of their power or fullness. You are by far the best judge of that. Welcome back, my champion.”

She shot a look at Duke Raise. “What is he doing here? This is a woman thing.”

Princess Take snorted at her use of “woman.”

Duke Raise colored. “The term is champion, not championess. Child.”

“ I am not a child!” A slap of blob accompanied this.

I had a lot in common with this nearly adult, and that could only confront my self-respect. If only petulance did not feel so good. “The term is champion, and you will not seek to exclude any worthy monster when you see what we face, Princess Bring.”

She colored next, and Duke Raise decided not to lower himself to smugness.

I closed my eyes and let some madness take root in me. “ Reckoning.”

My voice lifted in a roaring wind in the courtyard, but my champions—filling with their own madness—only cackled in response.

My eyes snapped open, and even mad, I had to steel myself to touch the stitch on my shoulder.

In the distance, almost on the opposite side of the world, a weak artery flopped in reply.

The artery was frayed indeed, a piece of fabric mostly torn in two.

The union it represented had not always been the strongest. Ironically, that accolade had once belonged to the Changes.

Or so we had thought from what little we could see of them.

Now this seam—so destroyed and limp—belonged to the monsters with the healthiest union. The Raises.

Duke Raise turned his head to peer at me with an owlish gaze. “That is me.”

I dipped my head. Did I dare? I had four champions for the first time, yet one of them was untested. I could not bargain on four champions tomorrow night.

“ What do you sense, sir ?” I said on the wind. I could do naught else while gripped in reckoning.

His body rippled with a shiver that was not fear, but a heady taste of power and purpose. “I sense that it is me. I sense that it is great. I sense that she must be with me.”

Ah. Of course. I summoned his duchess.

Her staircase erupted from cobblestones seconds later, and if Mother had not yawned the cobblestones back, I imagined stone and rubble would have careened over Vitale, crushing baffled humans here and there.

Her staircase was grand indeed, as had her duke’s been. The duchess’s was formed mostly of purple velvet. The balustrades were a gleaming gold, and gold embroidery detailed the narrow and steep walkway that was so vastly different from the wide and spacious staircase of the prior king.

“How well your narrow and steep stairs reflect you.” My voice swirled around her. “You walk alone and are unconcerned about comfort, but rather, how quickly you might get from one point to the next.”

Whereas her husband had formed the staircase that he had thought others expected to see of a king.

The duke battled between love and the power gripping him, but his duchess was able to ignore him to address me.

She bowed. “Yes, my queen. ’Tis so, and I am honored that you have noticed. You require me for reckoning, I connect.”

“We do. Kindly take the hand of your duke,” I hissed.

The duchess lit from within at my order, and the husband and wife rushed to each other, clutching their hands together.

No sooner had they done so than their expressions altered from joyous to confused. Then to fear in the next beat.

The duke whispered, “I cannot let her go. We are stuck in love.”

They were locked together?

I strode forward, but the cobblestones opened beneath them, and the Raises toppled from view. Without hesitation, Princess Bring leaped down after them.

A cackling Princess Take was next, and the changing princess soon followed her, her hands pressed against her body to better streamline her topple.

I was already moving too.

I dove in headfirst, noting that the hole was somewhat of a tunnel. A narrow one that would have only just admitted the Raises clutched together. Dark.

Do not touch the walls.

Do not look behind.

My ears informed me that we were not alone in this place.

Black sickness was in pursuit of the villain in his story— us .

As I hurtled through the world, ruin clawed at my boots.

Its chase began as a whisper and scratch, and soon enough, as we toppled deeper and alerted more of the sickness to our presence, the chase became a frenzied roar. A fury .

After healing so many veins, I knew that my power was useless against this foe, so I tucked my chin and pressed my body into a straight line as Princess Change had done. I felt my blasting passage accelerate and saw flashes of molten core.

Surely the heat should be impossible. Surely I should be burned to a crisp, and my champions too.

But this was a weak, nearly dead world.

Ahead, a pinprick of light appeared. But gravity was slowing my ascent—or descent—back to the surface. I shoved power out behind to continue my hurtling pace.

The pinprick grew larger, and I could make out the faces of my champions and the duchess peering through the hole.

Nearly there.

My view of them disappeared, as did all light.

The way was blocked.

And here, so close to freedom, I had been. Sickness had cut me off, and what now? I would be dragged back to its lair and devoured and feasted upon.

The world would end.

My power was of no use here, but my mind held great value and my body also.

I screamed my rage at the black wall separating me from my champions, and then—quite simply—hoping that this villain had been arrogant in the thickness of its blockade, I employed the use of my bobbing powers to blink six feet ahead.

I reappeared in the night, and out of a tunnel. Champions fell back as I landed.

No amount of this ruinous villain could hold back this queen. I twitched my trench coat back into place. “I prefer the other method of travel.”

The tunnel through the world sealed over, and the bubbling black was gone.

“I felt unable to travel any other way, my queen. A great force overtook me.” Duchess Raise was still clutching her husband. They were certainly fused together.

I scanned our surroundings, and bile rose in my throat as the putrid smell of rot registered. Princess Bring clung to Princess Change. We stood on an island in the middle of a sea of black. Of pus. Of infection.

“This is what a frayed seam looks like,” I murmured, switching off my sense of smell. “I had wondered.”

Now I was left to wonder how the heart would appear.

“We are here,” I said. “And are my champions prepared?”

“Prepared and daunted,” said Princess Take grimly. “We must defeat this at some point.”

Her connection echoed my own, and that of other champions. Operating through power and purpose, the three princesses surrounded the duke and duchess.

As soon as they had contact with the couple, their power pulsed out in a barrier that I could not have replicated even if my power was ten times stronger.

The black sea surrounding us started to ripple and bubble. Viscous mucous splattered upward from the agitated black to hit the barrier.

“I begin,” I said. “Duchess Raise, Duke Raise, do what you feel called to do against this ruin. Here is your monstrous purpose. Here is why you were made. Your love, your acceptance and uniquity—which is everything that humans could not achieve—is the antidote. Your union is strong, and now you will heal it entirely forevermore. This is what we do this night.”

“Yes, my queen,” said the duchess. “We are ready.”

That was well because as soon as I touched the stitch on my shoulder, I expected that a wave of black unlike anything we had experienced would attack.

I drew my power forth despite myself, and in my mind, I then dove into the stitch on my right shoulder.

There was an instant to see that the world had been erased, blackened. So instantly and completely, and then all I could do was fulfill my role as quickly as possible.

Mother.

The mother of the stitch was Richalle. Hurt and betrayal from her daughter’s abandonment had hardened this mother’s enormous heart. And so Richalle had rubbed and rubbed at her heart until it calloused.

I had dragged this mother, screaming, to be stitched.

But I could not do that now. This mother must fight of her own accord.

“Richalle, you have withered for this world. You have existed in turmoil in death. Your reconciliation with your daughter… too brief. I would give you more time. I would ask no more of my mothers, for my heart weeps for each goodbye.”

“Yet the world needs more of me,” Richalle answered.

She was stitched in vigil, but I could not see any of the other mothers. “Will you do this?”